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Sausage rolling with the punches

Thursday, August 25, 2016

We all know brands that have not moved with the times and disappeared from the high street completely – companies such as Woolworths and HMV who did not embrace modern consumer habits and unfortunately became obsolete, although still loved – quite the combo! One brand who saw they needed to change their focus and brand perception, and who have done so very well, is Greggs.

Switching focus to food-on-the-go, including some healthy options, and away from its traditional take-home bakery business, as well as offering a more customer-focused marketing strategy, has increased their sales month on month.

The combination of menu changes, extensive in-store refurbishments and a more fun and approachable social media personality has helped to position Greggs as a more desirable food brand – taking it away from its previous negative and cheap reputation. Greggs is now seen as offering value for money and tasty options – it is not artisan or high-end, it is nothing but itself…and people seem to genuinely love it, including those working there.

To demonstrate their value for money let’s compare the price of their bacon or sausage butty and coffee versus that of Starbucks – Greggs comes in at £2 while its American competitor comes in at almost £5…while they are not offering true like for like products, it is interesting to see the monetary difference.

Their social media is light hearted, current and irreverent; very much focussed at the everyman. They have almost 712,000 Facebook likes and 112,000 Twitter followers – not bad for a bakery!

They have also proven they know how to handle trolling with grace and humour. A perfect example of this took place a number of years ago when a Google error meant that a spoof Greggs logo appeared with a different (and not very nice) tagline -“Providing sh*t to scum for over 70 years.” Their response was perfect in that they entered into social conversation with Google offering them lots of doughnuts if the matter was fixed.

Lynne is our marketing manager and has worked in communications for more than 10 years. A proud Dub, (*Dublin, Ireland*), she has lived in the UK for over 6 years with most of this time spent living in sunny Brighton. New to Leeds, she is learning the Yorkshire way, although it is not diluting her accent at all. She talks about all things Network Marketing and The Book Recruitment, a lot, and via many channels!